AP U.S. History The American Pageant: Chapter 28 Key Terms

Social Gospel

Date: turn of the 20th century

Description: a reform movement led by Protestant ministers who used religious doctrine to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor

Significance: It was closely linked to the settlement-house movement, which brought middle-class, Anglo-American service volunteers into contact with immigrants and working people.

Muckrakers

Date: turn of the 20th century

Description: bright young reporters who won this unfavorable moniker from Theodore Roosevelt but boosted the circulations of their magazines by writing exposés of widespread corruption in American society

Significance: Their subjects included business manipulation of government, white slaves, child labor, and the illegal deeds of the trusts and helped spur the passage of reform legislation.

Initiative

Date: late 19th century

Description: a progressive reform measure allowing voters to petition to have a law placed on the general ballot

Significance: Like the referendum and recall, it brought democracy directly "to the people" and helped foster a shift toward interest group politics and away from old political "machines."

Referendum

Date: late 19th century

Description: a progressive reform procedure allowing voters to place a bill on the ballot for final approval, even after being passed by the legislature.

Significance: It brought democracy directly "to the people" and helped foster a shift toward interest group politics and away from old political "machines."

Recall

Date: late 19th century

Description: a progressive ballot procedure allowing voters to remove elected officials from office

Significance: It brought democracy directly "to the people" and helped foster a shift toward interest group politics and away from old political "machines."

Australian Ballot

Date: 1850s in Australia, late 19th century in America

Description: a system that allows voters privacy in marking their ballot choices

Significance: It was introduced to the United States during the progressive era to help counteract boss rule.

Muller v. Oregon

Date: 1908

Description: a landmark Supreme Court case in which crusading attorney (and future Supreme Court justice) Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of limiting the hours of women workers

Significance: Coming on the heels of Lochner v. New York, it established a different standard for male and female workers.

Lochner v. New York

Date: 1905

Description: a setback for labor reformers, this Supreme Court decision invalidated a state law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers

Significance: It held that the "right to free contract" was implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Elkins Act

Date: 1903

Description: law passed by Congress to impose penalties on railroads that offered rebates and customers who accepted them

Significance: The law strengthened the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Hepburn Act of 1906 added free passes to the list of railroad no-no's.

Meat Inspection Act

Date: 1906

Description: a law passed by Congress to subject meat shipped over state lines to federal inspection

Significance: The publication of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle earlier that year so disgusted American consumers with its description of conditions in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that it mobilized public support for government action.

Pure Food and Drug Act

Date: 1906

Description: a law passed by Congress to inspect and regulate the labeling of all foods and pharmaceuticals intended for human consumption

Significance: This legislation, and additional provisions passed in 1911 to strengthen it, aimed particularly at the patent medicine industry. The more comprehensive Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 largely replaced this legislation.

Hetch Hetchy Valley

Date: 1913

Description: the federal government allowed the city of San Francisco to build a dam here

Significance: This was a blow to preservationists, who wished to protect the Yosemite National Park, where the dam was located.

Dollar Diplomacy

Date: first applied after 1909

Description: name applied by President Taft's critics to the policy of supporting U.S. investments and political interests abroad; first applied to the financing of railways in China after 1909, the policy then spread to Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua

Significance: President Woodrow Wilson disavowed the practice, but his administration undertook comparable acts of intervention in support of U.S. business interests, especially in Latin America.

Payne-Aldrich Bill

Date: 1909

Description: while intended to lower tariff rates, this bill was eventually revised beyond all recognition, retaining high rates on most imports

Significance: President Taft angered the progressive wing of his party when he declared it "the best bill that the Republican party ever passed."

New Freedom

Date: 1912

Description: platform of reforms advocated by Woodrow Wilson in his first presidential campaign, including stronger antitrust legislation to protect small business enterprises from monopolies, banking reform, and tariff reductions

Significance: Wilson's strategy involved taking action to increase opportunities for capitalist competition rather than increasing government regulation of large trusts.

New Nationalism

Date: 1912

Description: state-interventionist reform program devised by journalist Herbert Croly and advocated by Theodore Roosevelt during his Bull Moose presidential campaign

Significance: Roosevelt did not object to continued consolidation of trusts and labor unions. Rather, he sought to create stronger regulatory agencies to ensure that they operated to serve the public interest, not just private gain.

Ida Tarbell

Date: 1904

Description: a muckraker who wrote in the McClure's magazine

Significance: She made her reputation by publishing the history of the Standard Oil Company, the "Mother of Trusts." She exposed the corruption of the oil industry with her work.

Henry Demarest Lloyd

Date: late 19th century

Description: journalist/muckraker in the pre-1900s.

Significance: He attacked the Standard Oil Company with his book Wealth Against Commonwealth.

Thorstein Veblen

Date: late 19th century

Description: famous sociologist/economist

Significance: He wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Jacob A. Riis

Date: 1890

Description: a muckraker and photographer; his account was an indictment of the dirt, disease, vice, and misery of the rat-gnawed human rookeries known as New York slums

Significance: He used photography to document the incredibly poor conditions of many impoverished communities and wrote How the Other Half Lives.

Robert M. ("Fighting Bob") La Follette

Date: early 20th century

Description: progressive Republican governor of Wisconsin

Significance: He wrested control from corporations and gave it back to the people.

Hiram W. Johnson

Date: early 20th century

Description: Republican governor of California in 1910

Significance: A dynamic prosecutor of grafters, he helped break the dominant grip of the Southern Pacific Railroad on California politics and then, like La Follette, set up a political machine of his own.

Florence Kelley

Date: 1899

Description: a former Hull House resident who became Illinois's first chief factory inspector

Significance: In 1899 she took control of the National Consumers League.

Frances E. Willard

Date: early 20th century

Description: founder of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union

Significance: She would fall on her knees in prayer on saloon floors to make her points.

Gifford Pinchot

Date: early 20th century

Description: a notable conservationist

Significance: He headed the federal Division of Forestry.

John Muir

Date: early 20th century

Description: a rather eccentric man

Significance: He is notable for his push for conservationism on a national level.

Herbert Croly

Date: late 19th century/early 20th century

Description: progressive thinker that wrote The Promise of American Life; devised New Nationalism

Significance: The book agreed with Theodore Roosevelt's old policy of leaving good trusts alone but controlling bad trusts.